Reference

This section is a fact sheet for the repository: configuration knobs, dependencies, and reference data that doesn't fit in a feature-oriented page.

Pages

• Configuration — environment variables, GODEBUG knobs, build flags.
• Dependencies — the small set of golang.org/x/... modules vendored under src/vendor/ and src/cmd/vendor/.

In-tree reference documents

The repository ships several long-form reference docs as HTML/Markdown files. They are the canonical specifications for their respective topics:

Document	Path	Topic
Go specification	doc/go_spec.html	The language definition
Memory model	doc/go_mem.html	Synchronization rules
Assembler manual	doc/asm.html	Pseudo-assembly dialect
GODEBUG list	doc/godebug.md	Runtime debug knobs
Compiler README	src/cmd/compile/README.md	gc compiler internals
Runtime HACKING	src/runtime/HACKING.md	Required reading for runtime hackers
Internal ABI	src/cmd/compile/abi-internal.md	Compiler/runtime calling conventions
Unified IR README	src/cmd/compile/internal/noder/README.md	Compiler IR format
SSA README	src/cmd/compile/internal/ssa/README.md	SSA pipeline internals

Per-release notes

The doc/initial/ and doc/next/ directories contain release notes that get assembled into a single HTML page at release time. The cmd/relnote tool helps maintain these.

API manifests

api/ at the repo root contains one file per Go release listing every public symbol. The format is line-oriented and machine-checkable; cmd/api enforces it during CI. New CLs that add to the public API must update the matching api/next/<issue>.txt file.

Where to read next

• Configuration — what each env var does.
• Dependencies — the vendored modules.
• How to contribute → tooling — what cmd/api checks.